In case anyone else keeps track of the leader board on post counts, I apparently passed Arya for fifth place last week. Ironically enough, the post that put me ahead of her was about her.
So, I'm 5th, Fixer is 4th, and JL is 2nd.
Don't know why I keep track of this stuff, I just do. Although I'm not sure if I should be worried about my 4.37 posts a day.
My post count is over 10/day. 
Yeah, I saw that...which is why I'm not that worried about my puny-ass 4.37 after all.
Let's see, where am I..?
Woot! 7th!
We are a chatty lot, aren't we?
Discuss, discuss 
Just Auram, or a specific Technique + Auram?
If it's just Auram, well, forget Isen
Well, at least, I'm not gonna be 4th much longer, seeing as I'm under 2 posts per day on average.
Joined on 2006, too. Time flies.
I want to get them all in a secret society 
Inspired by Societas Eruditorum
Ignoti et quasi occulti
It's a weird question, because I feel like the entire skill system is so deeply broken that trying to keep it functional and balanced is like deck chairs on boats to me.
If I were SG, I would completely rewrite the skills system. Open ended lists of overlapping skills and every gorram book published releases a half dozen additional skills. It's BS. I would most certainly reduce the number of languages out there, and I would provide a much more functional list of potential specialties, and more importantly, a list of invalid specialties.
Okay, that strikes me as a fallacious argument. Show me one place in the MRB where they say "skill with specialty counts."
This strikes me as a significant cultural difference. In the modern age, when you say, "Sheelagh reads a book," the image is of her sitting in some spine-bending position on the incorrect bits of furniture, eating apples and drinking milk and getting the pages of a trade paperback all sticky.
In the medieval paradigm, when you say, "Sheelagh reads a book," what you mean is "Sheelagh seeks out the librarian, who moves the massive folio to a reading pedestal in one of the many alcoves of the library." The entire world thinks of books as nigh-sacred, incredibly rare things. People haven't even invented "reading without speaking" yet.
At age 10 in the medieval paradigm, being given access to a library book is a terrifyingly impressive burden in the middle ages. Sheelagh, especially as a giant, comes from a world where she might literally be flayed alive for tripping in front of the wrong person. She knows perfectly well that this book was hand-copied, bound and illuminated by 4 masters of the book-making arts. She's not going to get apple sauce on it.
So the reason Renauld is being asked in the first place, Alexei wants to get a Familiar. I have an idea for a large dog, ideal for hunting and fighting, like a Mastiff. Alexei figures that a Redcap might know more local legends about a magical dog. I tried some lookups online, and couldn't really find a dog breed that fit, back in the day. Does anyone have any suggestions of a breed?
Area lore also includes local legends(as per RAW). Renaud has lore Bibracte(legends) at 4 by 1227.
That is why I suggested Renaud.
A quick Wiki check shows a couple of possiblilities.
Greyhound I would suggest strongly against, as they are quite fragile...speaking from personal experience, since we have a rescue greyhound. Their skin is paper-thin and tears easily, and we almost had him bleed out from stepping on a rock on the back step.
Probably alaunt or mastiff, seems right up Alexei's alley. The mastiff was described as far back as 1570, and is depicted in paintings in the 15th century, so it's pretty reasonable that they were around in period. The Alaunt is recorded in England in the 5th century. Either one of those seems like it would work pretty well.
It's a bit of a red herring, first because you didn't have a propensity to do anything of the sort when you were an SG for a saga here, and second the language ability has no mechanics associated with it. Bringing up the entire ability system in the framework of a discussion of language ability discussion is totally off the point.
Show me where it says it doesn't count. It does count in specific places. In this instance, I don't believe written is a valid specialty for a language. If you want to overrule me, the mechanism for doing that is getting all of the troupe to come to consensus around your view that written is a valid specialty.
I think we had this discussion (or one much like it) in Canaries, and I'm of the opinion that you need a raw Language score of 4 to read a language and 5 to write (if you have Artes Liberales and literacy in the appropriate script). Rereading the description of Specializations on p. 62, where it says "you act as if your score were one level higher than it actually is," it can easily be argued that this should apply to Languages, as well. But Languages, despite being an Ability, have next to nothing in common with any other Ability - specifically, you almost never have an associated roll. Area Lore, Brawl, Entrancement, you have to make an Ability + Characteristic roll. I think it is this difference that..um..makes the difference. So I'm going to go with needing a raw score of 4/5 to read/write. And I'm fine with calling it a House Rule as opposed to RaW.
Viscaria responds to this by ReTe'ing the cave mouth so that it's less visible from the grounds. For the rest of 1223.3, the only person to enter/leave her caves will be Patience -- she'll deliver meals, letters, etc.
No idea what this is for... This story doesn't concern Viscaria.
For the record, it was two days. Friday noon to Sunday 5pm is just over 50 hours, I'll round it two two days instead of three (it's even, and conforms to my House Rule for rounding to even numbers )
My comment wasn't about posting rate, and that was well spelled out in the initial recruitment thread.
My only additional comment is to any player, and I kind of hinted at it with The Fixer: if you're going to be involved in multiple active threads, you need to consider the pacing of the primary player in that thread. Generally, if that player is ready to move forward, I'm going to move it forward, if the primary player wants to. Because any and all participants in a PBP saga can have erratic schedules, I designed this saga to minimize the impact of any one player bringing multiple active threads to a crawl. I dislike that it minimizes PC interactions, but that's what other threads like 100 Pieces of Mons Electi and In the Living Years are for, IMO.
This comment was more about stating how I saw where the stories are standing, in the event that someone is expecting me to post something or post more, I'm stating, explicitly, that I don't see where I can push things forward as things are.
This was general commentary, and it affected a few players, not just one specifically. If something's not clear to a player in their story, I want them to let me know, and I'll see what I can do to clear it up. I wasn't sure if this case applied to amul, or not. If a player makes a post that a character is going to do something, such as speak with other PCs, then there is almost nothing I can do, except throw in a dues ex machina to prevent the conversation taking place, and this most certainly applies to Alexei where qcipher left the Whatever Happened to Mr. Walid story hanging.
I was not SG during character creation, and the skills system was a large part of my hesitation in picking up the role when Phoenix 1.0 died. I specifically discuss my issues with the skill system when talking about whether or not I should use the characters for Phoenix 2.0 (although I do not recall if I did so in PM with JeanMichelle or in the public forum). I admit that I only got as far as choosing which skills I would merge/delete before deciding not to inflict the character rewrites on the players, but that's only to say that I stopped before getting to languages. My views on open-ended skill lists are well documented, here on this forum, as well as in various print publications dating back over a decade.
You may recall when I was running Phoenix, the relevant local language was "Spanish." I also made comments on everyone's specialties, going so far as to nitpick grog specialty choices, and edit wiki pages to highlight them. I also decided that Faeries could speak any language without having read RoP:F, or its ruling to the same effect. When I ran Phoenix, I vetted everyone's character sheets for the RP value of their specialties before they were approved for play. When you vetted character sheets, I'm sure you were focused on whatever your pet peeves about the system are, too.
....and seeking that consensus is why I continue to discuss this, here in the public forum.
The only place I know of where the rules specifically discuss specialties are:
Beyond that, the description of Specialties is that when it applies, your score counts as one higher in the skill in question. I take this to mean that they do not need to discuss specialties every other time they talk about skills.
How often do language specialties come up? If, for example, I were to choose poetry (one of the listed language specialties), then how often in the average campaign do you think that specialty would be relevant? How does that compare to one of the other intellectual skills -- Area Lore (legends), for example? Code of Hermes (apprentices)?
The RAW is that you need 4 to read and 5 to write summa/tractii. Presumably, based on the text, at 4 you can write letters just as easily as you can converse about casual topics. JL and I are discussing whether or not Latin (written) is a valid specialty (I'm not entirely sure, but we seem to be discussing both whether or not it is valid in the RAW, as well as for this campaign).
Note that the specialties on Viscaria's character sheet is "written," not "writings." The specialty is meant to imply that she has more experience reading the language than she has expressing herself in it or listening to people talk -- which is one reason why I invited Mufarjj to join us for Mother's Footsteps, before this discussion came up, so that my character would have an occasion where her Language specialty did NOT apply.
I could have sworn that I saw something someone else said (Fixer?) about seeking written fluency over conversational fluency, but I can't find the passage now.
He said "I write to the other magi to inform them." Viscaria's response to the message is extreme and therefore noteworthy, if only as a passing comment in the story ("There's a priest coming?! Quick! Board up the windows! Lock the doors! Don't let him see me!" "Uh....okay, dude. Chill out.").
It's the sort of information that could cause a magi to discover/investigate/realize her flaws regarding the Divine.
I reposted that so it was clearer.
Thanks for the clarification. I didn't assume this was a comment specifically at me. I was asking about how that comment specifically affected that thread.